Jake Caleb's 'My Mechanical Sister' consists of a video essay and a clothing collection based on a science fiction story. The starting point is the Dale of Norway textile factory, which Caleb and artist Eleni Ieremia visited in 2025. In that year, plans were announced to build a data center in the historic factory buildings. As a form of artistic research, Caleb and Ieremia write a science fiction story about two women. One lives in Dale in the 1930s, at the beginning of the electric age, and the other woman lives in the present, the era of emerging artificial intelligence. By traversing these time periods, the work speculates on changing working conditions, gender roles, the relationship to craftsmanship, and the technological impact on local communities and natural resources. Now that the era of artificial intelligence is dawning, the work raises pressing questions about how these technologies will be used, at what cost, and who will benefit from them. The story serves as the guiding thread in a video essay filmed in and around the current textile factory in Dale. It is accompanied by a clothing line created in collaboration with designer Ingeborg Kvalnes of Dale of Norway.
Artist
Jake Caleb
Title
My Mechanical Sister
Budget CBK Rotterdam
€ 7.500,00
Request type
I&V subsidy